


The Alcohol Tastes Sweeter on your Lips

by thefrenchmistake



Series: The Angels Can't Help Us Now [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Castiel/Meg Masters, Past Jo Harvelle/Dean Winchester, References to Depression, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23615545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefrenchmistake/pseuds/thefrenchmistake
Summary: Sometimes it’s warm, and smooth, and beautiful in a way nothing ever was in his life, like Castiel’s blue grace. Other times it’s dark and twirling, scratching at his throat, making him gag on words and tears and pain, clawing at his chest and trying desperately to tear him in half; sometimes it’s the ugliest thing he’s ever felt, and it makes him think of Hell.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: The Angels Can't Help Us Now [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1624105
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	The Alcohol Tastes Sweeter on your Lips

**Author's Note:**

> Short one shot with no real timeline, some references to 15x09 which tore my heart out (Dean's prayer anyone ?) and to Meg and Jo, some of my favorite characters on the show.  
> On this, enjoy !

Sometimes it’s warm, and smooth, and beautiful in a way nothing ever was in his life, like Castiel’s blue grace. Other times it’s dark and twirling, scratching at his throat, making him gag on words and tears and pain, clawing at his chest and trying desperately to tear him in half; sometimes it’s the ugliest thing he’s ever felt, and it makes him think of Hell.

Overall, the result is the same: he cannot control it, and there will be a time (soon, he can feel it) where he won’t be able to ignore it anymore.

Because Castiel smiles at him the way he rarely does, a little lopsided, like his lips are trying to embrace the unfamiliar shape of it, and Dean wants to embrace it, too, wants it so bad he hears the voice and the fists of his father - _you don’t deserve this, you don’t deserve this, why would you ?_ \- and tears his eyes away.

Because Castiel wraps his fingers around his wrist more gently than anyone Dean’s ever known, and heals him when the people Dean has always loved kept on hurting him, even unintentionally.

Because he’s the first one that pleaded a sort of allegiance to him even when he didn’t have to; and it took Dean time, so much time, to understand that the need to protect Sam was mutual, that he cannot quite believe he’d be lucky enough to inspire some kind of faith in someone else. He doesn’t believe he’s worthy of it, of anything akin to faith.

This is not who he is.

He is a soldier.

He is a soldier, he obeys orders and stay in line (except when it comes to Sammy. You don’t keep him in line when it comes to him). And what a joke, right ? That he’s the one -because, let’s be real, Sam wasn’t really a factor in the equation at first- who turned an angel and led him to rebel against everything he had ever believed in, against his family of millennia, against _God_. Ain’t it a fucking joke.

It’s really anything but funny, though.

Dean knows pain. Sometimes he thinks it’s all he’s ever known.

Because he’s been running his entire life, from the moment he ran out of that burning room.

Running from his mother’s ghost, from his father’s fists, from monsters, from the feeling of failure after Sam left for Stanford.

He thinks he’s never stopped running, until Castiel took his hand and whispered “Stop”.

He can still feel his fingers where they gripped his, in those dark woods he’d rather erase altogether, and Dean doesn’t think he’ll ever forget what it was like, to fail him.To leave him behind, like he had been left himself so many times before (maybe that’s why this took such a toll on him; Castiel had never left him behind).

He doesn’t pray to God, doesn’t believe in God even as his children are trying to kill him; he believes in Satan alright, but… The only one he prays to, the only one he finds the strength to call and plead to, is Castiel. And he’d never go to a confessional, but he’d crawl to church and fall on his knees and pray until his lips bled if it meant Cas could answer, if it meant he could come back.

This man, this angel, this broken hero and monster looks at him like he’s more than he is, like he is something more than a screwed up human. And maybe, one day, Dean will indulge in this, will allow himselfto be loved like he doesn’t think he deserves, to be happy like he thought wasn’t possible. The blood in his veins seems to boil with need and want, things he is not accustomed to, things he could never reach - _You look out for Sammy_ \- and the idea that he could have that scares him to death. But Castiel brought with him an infinity of possibilities, an idea of what could be, and Dean wants to grasp it and never let it go.

His entire body hurts now, all the time, like his organs are failing one after the other and he doesn’t know what to call it (Depression. It’s called depression and he knows it) but he drinks the feelings down in alcohol because it’s the only thing he knows how to do correctly, the only thing his father has truly passed down to him.

So really, it’s not something he planned, neither something he saw coming because he didn’t even think it was in the cards for him. It simply happens, like everything happens in his life, except this time it’s… it’s _good_.

This time, there is no rush and no case, no killing and no monster (except the ones in their minds; those never left).

Sam isn’t in the bunker, on a trip to see Eileen, so it’s just them.

It’s simply Castiel leaving his trench coat on the back of a chair and going into the kitchen to come back with two beers. It’s simply Dean, who sits down heavily at the table and smiles softly when the angel hands him his beer, immediately taking a gulp.

When the silence in the room is begging to be shattered, Dean opens his mouth and spills the things that rest heavy on his chest at night.

“Do you ever regret it ?” He blurts out, the bottle of beer glued to his hand like it belongs there.Maybe it does.

Castiel turns his incredibly blue eyes on him, and he thinks he can see in them what Heaven used to be; but the shadows of the memories are clouded by everything that happened, including the flames of Hell he had to cross just to get to him, years ago. These irises speak of love, of faith, of betrayal and pain.

He knows how it looks; he sees it every time he looks in a mirror.

“Raising me from perdition. Saving me,” he specifies.

Castiel tilts his head a little in this habit he never managed to shake off, in the way he did that first time and spoke a truth he didn’t wish anyone to know.

But he knew. He always does.

“I know you think you do not deserve to be saved. The truth is, I know it intimately, too, since… Well,” he stops himself, chuckling, and Dean wants to give him everything he is and will ever be. “But I do believe in you, Dean. In every way. And I will save you if I can, every time.”

Dean feels the mark of the angel’s hand burning his shoulder, branding him, even as it’s not here anymore - but he feels it, from time to time, a comforting pain that assures him yes, he’s alive, out of hell- and he can still see Castiel in the way he saw him the first time.

He didn’t know, then.

He didn’t know anything.

And now, he remembers what Sam told him he saw; he remembers every fucking word like they’re branded in his mind, and won’t ever get out.

The mark.

The coffin.

He cannot -will not- lose Castiel to this, not after all this time.

Not after Purgatory.

He thought he had to leave him there- thought he would have to leave him behind to die in this godforsaken place again and he couldn’t deal with it and he couldn’t breath and he prayed, he prayed harder and more honestly he had ever done. He would’ve lied (he was very good at that) if he said it wasn’t… It wasn’t something more than what he actually said, that what his words encompassed wasn’t more than forgiveness, more than a simple request ( _I love you, I love you, I love you_ ).

In this moment, right now, his eyes meet blue ones and Dean feels his chest loosen, and he breathes easier.

Maybe, just maybe, Cas understood what he couldn’t say.

_I heard your prayer._

Dean takes his hand.

But it’s also more.

It takes one more night, much the same, with two glasses of smoldering scotch and regret hanging low between them and the feeling of Cas’s skin under his hand still burning.

It takes a little more, just a nudge, just a shared reminiscence to finally look forward and revel in the fact that there is much ahead, brighter that the bygones.

“Did you love her ? Meg ?”

Castiel’s eyes get lost in his drink before he takes a sip, frowning. Dean wonders what she would’ve said at the sight, what dirty joke she would’ve made with her sharp tongue and her sharper mind.

“In a way,” he finally confesses in a low voice, like he should be ashamed of it.

Like he’s fallen too far to be worth anything that has to do with love.

“Did you love Jo ?”

Dean snorts, because goddamn, Jo is a painful memory and sometimes he wakes up with the feel of her fingers under his gripping the detonator even as blood renders them damp and sloppy.

“I don’t think I knew what it was, back then. But I… I think … Maybe. I think I could have, given the chance.”

“Do you, now ? Know what love is,” Castiel clarifies at the interrogatory look on the hunter’s face.

Lips parting, Dean stares at him, a little breathless and a little scared. He thinks of his smile and the way he laughs and the way he holds his fake FBI badge; he thinks of how he understands references now and rolls his eyes at them. He thinks of his tears, and his anger and his grace and his lost wings. He thinks of his hand branding his skin and a pyre burning Castiel’s body by the lake.

And Dean thinks, yeah. Yeah, he does.

And then he thinks _I want this._

So he simply leans forward, puts two fingers under Cas’s chin to tilt his head up, and kisses him.

He expected the angel to be surprised, to make a sound, but all he can feel is the smile against his lips, making it difficult to kiss him like he wants to.

It’s then, when their tongues begin to intertwine and Dean finally draws a low moan from the angel, that the hunter realizes this is it; he won’t ever be able not to touch him again.

He’s tasted him, he’s heard him, and he’s done for because this angel and his mouth and his skin resemble heaven shaped as its most painfully beautiful tragedy.

Dean is strangely alright with that.


End file.
